2001-09-11 - 1:59 p.m.

plato told

once again on npr they were talking to Billy Collins (the new poet laureate who i quoted recently). when asked if there were a poem that was in applicable to this situation. he said that you could pick just about any poem Frost's Stopping By A Woods, Emerson's Song of Myself, even Mother Goose would be speaking out against what happened today. because all poetry does (or should) advocate life, and abhor the destruction of life.
and i'm thinking now about e.e. cummings' "plato told".
--------------
plato told him:
he couldn't
believe it(jesus told him;he
wouldn't believe it)
lao tsze certainly told
him,and general
(yes mam)
sherman; and even
(believe it or not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't belive it,no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue el;
in the top of his head:
to tell him
--------------
one of the guys on npr today said that he assumed that the hijackers were at the controls of the plane. because he couldn't imagine that a pilot wouldn't either veer at the last second, or simply choose death instead of being a part of this terrible act.
what i can't understand personally, is how anyone at all could ever decide to do something like this. what wires must cross in a human brain to allow the very idea that it is right to deliberately kill thousands of innocent people? how could they even contemplate it without becoming physically ill? short of breath and nauseous as i've been all day since i heard about it?
i don't understand that at all.
i pray that i never will.
oh yeah, eRoommate called. he's safe. all present and accounted for in the world of j$, thank god.